Don't go Free to Play(F2P), COH

It's got to be tough to be a publisher right now.

There are a bunch of games that are just now reaching "ready to launch" stage, that were begun at a time when subscriptions were the accepted way to run a game. After 2-4 years of development, they're ready to launch and the market has changed on them in the meantime.

What do you do in that case?

Personally, at this point the games that I'd be willing to subscribe to is a number that can be counted on a couple of fingers.

I much prefer being able to pick and choose how much content I want. The plain truth is that I don't have tons of money or tons of time. I can't maintain multiple subscriptions and feel like I'm getting value for my money. The biggest problem with subscriptions is that it locks you into that one game to a great extent.

I would prefer it every new game adopted the "buy once, play forever" model. Price it like a console game. Fill the company store with compelling content and make the rest of your money there.

It's funny. There is another game I frequent, which I won't name. I mention it because there's a fellow on the forum for this game. He complains bitterly about what a rip-off this game is BECAUSE HE SPENT SO MUCH MONEY IN THE COMPANY STORE.

That's right. This guy's constant complaint is that he plays a subscription game now and he's spending so much less on the subscription than he spent in the company store for the freemium game in which he had a lifetime membership (so, pay once and full access, no subscription fees). He sees this as the publisher taking advantage of him and victimizing him in some fashion.

It's really a perfect example of how people can spend MORE on a game when they feel they are making a free choice to spend and buy the things they desire instead of being forced into "paying the entrance fee".

I will not be surprised at all if this year and maybe next year are the last that we ever see the launch of a game with a subscription-only based membership.

Look, this is the game development industry. Employees have always come and gone like the tides and that's seen as normal. Absent friends may be gone, but they're still friends. No need for panic. Just like there wasn't any reason to delete a certain post *grumbles*

This MMO is a hidden gem. If it had been properly marketed 6 -7 years ago it might have been able to rise above being just a niche filler. And, in my opinion, no game ongoing or on the horizon is going to be able to knock CoH/V out of this niche. Not the Content Light and Bad Looking MMO out now nor the City of Side-kicks MMO to come.

Let's hope that the complaints keep coming while reading these forums in 2020

you know, f2p doesnt bother me, really. lets be hoenst, f2p, as i have seen it handled, is really jsut a demo with microtransactions. the subscribers still carry on, a little better even because usually bonuses are given to them as added incentive and generally the free version is jsut unsatisfying enough to nudge the freebies to sub for real. so long as the bulk month discounts are maintained, if the decision to go f2p is judged prudent, i'd be ok. It used to be going f2p was a mark of failure, these days is basically just the new business model. we really have been running on a model from the original big 3d mmo, things change. if free players bug you, edit your tab, poof, no more posts by them.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Rick made the initial pitch. Got the ball rolling. Got design started. Then floundered.

Jack was brought in to help. He took over design. He exhibited competence. He was promoted. Rick was let go.

This sort of thing isn't actually all that unusual.

In a way, Dakan was the Woz to Emmert's Steve Jobs.

The fact is that Jack Emmert DID bring the game to a reasonably successful launch and a reasonably successful first year.

He then inexplicably (to us, anyway) put CoH on the back burner in order to pursue other opportunities. This is why he earns such enmity in the community. It's not really that he was blunt about his ideas or unyielding in believing that his ideas were correct and that players were often wrong. He primarily appeared that way because he bothered to engage with players instead of hide in an ivory tower like most game devs of most games do.

His real "crime" was launching a successful game and then apparently abandoning it for no discernable reason.

This is why NCSoft's purchase of the IP and creation of Paragon Studios was the best thing ever to happen to the game. Renewed investment in the dev team and the game.

Whatever you think of Jack, he's not lying when he says "I launched City of Heroes". He did. Without him, it quite possibly would have been shut down by the investors before it made it to launch. That's an alternate universe and therefore unknowable, but it's a definite possibility for how things could have played out.

F2P? - Its clearly worked for [insert developer that sounds like a jet engine] - apparently 3-times as many people are online at peak-time and they've doubled their revenue since changing from a paid subscription model.

heh that used to be in my sig, but yeah, issue 1 coh was good for its time, but lets say the game has improved significantly. heck, look at how elemental armors didnt even stack, if you wanted stat protection, you compromised your defense/res to everything else.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

As far as Jack goes, I never doubted his strengths in what he did well. It's just that what he did well was not run and manage an ongoing MMO. As I understood it, Rick Dakan was a very good writer, artist and probably visionary, but a very bad project manager, and so while his ideas were grand, nothing was actually getting accomplished. Ideas, as I've found out the hard way, are cheap. It's actual, working implemented products that are the real treasure, and it doesn't seem like Rick was getting anything produced.

Jack's strengths, it seems, lie in getting things shaped up and out the door. Jack's weaknesses lie in not knowing what to do with that thing once it is, in fact, out the door. He spent, what, a year floundering around trying to figure out what his "vision" for the game was when it was already pretty much set in stone and when players already had their own visions of what the game should be. I don't know how well Jack worked with his team, but I know he utterly sucked at working with players, sticking to his own vision and designing his own game, expectations and requests be damned.

Yes, the City of Heroes they launched was immediately perverted by us, the unruly fanbase, into something completely not at all like what they'd originally intended the game to be. From everything I've seen and read, they never intended the game to be at all soloable for pretty much anyone (remember the bosses debates?), just as an example. But rather the building on what the game actually WAS and improving that experience, Jack kept trying to kick the game back to... I don't know what, to be honest. Some mid-point between what he originally wanted and what he later changed his mind to wanting. But that was far, far sideways of what the game actually was and what players actually wanted that his eventual decision seems to have been "Fine, have it your way. I'll go make what I had in mind in another game, instead."

We've seen a lot of people come and go since then, and while all have been badmouthed in their turn, I feel the current development team is far more in tune with how the game works and what they can and should do with it than Jack ever was.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.